Cheese in the Evening – Chapter 7, Epilogue 11

So, immediately after having gone from terror to terror, K’ip continues to terror. No wonder he’s getting a bit tired and emotional (no alcohol or nip involved) by the end of today’s strip. It’s just kind of not his day, starting with his hunting results*…

But it can’t be helped, he’s gotta get through this. It’s really not the Elder’s fault, he’s just doing bog-standard elder stuff. First he addresses K’ip pre-existing terror with a home remedy made up of simple homilies and an informational brochure, and then he inflicts the fresh terror, because it’s necessary exposition. And after all, it’s not really surprising – the Elder’s vision looks more or less exactly like at least 70 % of the visions that get mentioned in this early stage of a fantasy story. A shadow rising in the East, and then a litany of horrible consequences, and then an implied complete end to everything good ever forever, including puppies…uh, wait, I’ll retract the puppies thing. Not because they weren’t threatened, but because I’m not entirely sure how the Eni’lef feel about puppies, on racial grounds…

So, everything really quite standard – as the Elder pointed out correctly, dark shadows have a noticeable tendency towards rising in the East in fantasy fiction, in favour of any other point of the compass. It’s probably mostly the Mongols’ fault, their template tends to get used for a lot of this element of fantasy stories in general.

The shape of the shadow in the accompanying visualization is the standard model, as well. Horns, claws… and wings, or the shadow about it reaching out like two vast wings, that’s always a bit hard to tell.

The litany of prophecised evils is also a standard of the fantasy fiction genre, but predates it by many centuries. The bit of ‘priests transgressing with the cattle of the poor’ bit, for example, I took from an ancient Egyptian lament of this type. It sounded appropriate, although I do not know what kind of liberties priests took with other peoples’ cattle back in those days…and I’m kind of afraid to ask. >_>

And the next step coming up isn’t much of surprise either, of course – after the dark prophecy, you get the glimmer of hope bit, otherwise the story would be pretty pointless. But it’ll have to wait for the next strip, I’m afraid. I don’t want K’ip to start suffering from emotional whiplash.

More on Thurs…uh, Monday.

* Yeah, he got a can of his favorite food out of it in the end, but he’s already completely forgotten about that. Cats. >_>